Nice vid. The ability to fly at night and regardless of temps makes this hobby even better. Are you using a direct drive tail set-up?

What flight times are people getting with the TP 900 Prolite batteries? I am getting around 20 with 2 heat sinks on the main and tail motors, carbons on main and tail and AEK kit

lostsoul, I just flew for 30 min. The lipo alarm came on, it is set for 9.1V. I landed, checked the voltage and it was 10.2V. Just to check the power, I took off again fairly aggressively, and it had tons of power left. Lifts off easily, and I'm sure would fly as high as I wanted it to.

i ordered the bell hiller arms from heliproz i know they connect to the unsed ball on swash and to the fly bar. how do you connect the arms to the blade grips. i ordered an aluminum swash from heliproz too. kind of tell how you installed them

Ok, I admit it, I checked and they're 7C. But they're also 1300's instead of 1100 so they can handle 9-10 amp draw. My blade is only drawing 6 amps. My 1320's are 12C but only 2s so I guess that's why they seem pretty equal. And they were from heli-direct and at 20 bucks each ( I paid 18.99) they're still a steal.

Zooland1/others,
That Lipo from Helidirect works ok for you?Doesnt that battery require a particular charger?I have a Esky EC103A lipo charger that charges a 7.4 or a 11.1 v lipo......can I use this Esky charger for that Helidirect Lipo?
Skybooger

Yes it is a standard 11.1. However mine came with an extra set of wires. At first I was confused what the heck they were. As it turns out they're for connecting a balancer. So no big deal.

From what I understand, the C rating is how much the battery can safely discharge. It's not how much current it will put out-right? So if a battery is 7c or 12c, shouldn't it give the same performance? So for example, if you connect a 7C battery to a motor that draws more thann 10 amps or so-you could damage the battery or something? And since the Blade doesn't draw that much-its safe to use a 7C? Am I missing something here?

Thanks! No, I have the stock tail config. and have not really had any issues with it. I guess when I get better at flying I may want to upgrade it...

I could be wrong but my understanding has always been that the C rating is how much current you can pull out of it which is the same as saying how fast you can discharge it safely. example: 1000 mah batt. 7C would mean you should never exceed 7x1000ma (7 amps) during discharge. An electric motor does not pull current at a linear rate in all flying conditions. So, if we have a motor that draws 3 amps at a steady state hover then I would guess that it could probably pull 6-7 amps in a stress condition of accelerating hard. So, I would be much more comfortable with a 12C batt. in my Emaxx RC truck I use extremely high performance sub-C cells that can easily handle 30 amps and cost way more than a standard pack of C size rechargables from Radio Shack. Cost is very much related to the ability of a cell to handle current.

thanks for all the help

So, what happens if you try to pull 20 amps from a 7C 1320mah lipo? Is that another way to cause it to explode? I also understand here that if you overdischarge a lipo, that could cause it to explode. Has this happened to anyone? Overdischarging you lipo in flight and causing your heli or plane to ignite into a fireball?

Not all batteries can pull the same current. A lot of the cheaper packs will sag when under heavy load. My ThunderPower 900mAh pack is a generation 2 lipo. It sags a lot more than my ThunderPower 1320mAh prolite pack. You wanna really start laughing you should see how bad a GWS 1300 mAh Generation 1 lipo sags. Oh man that's funny.

Let's say you have a pack that is 1300mAh and it's rated at 13C continuous and 17C burst. That means the maximum continuous amp draw is 16.9 amps for that pack and 22.1 amps bursting for no more than 10 seconds. Now if you were to actually run that pack at those numbers you would significantly reduce the packs life but the manufacturer says it's safe. Now if you try to pump 30 amps out of that pack it will explode in a heart beat causing your heli or plane to come down in a ball of fire. Do not ever go over the maximum rating of a pack and never run the pack at it's maximum burst rating for more than 10 seconds.

Not all packs are the same. The C rating is only the maximum amp draw that they can handle. It does not say anything about how efficient they are at delivering that power. Here's an example of the TP 1320mAh 11.1v Prolite pack ($55) against the GWS 1300mAh 11.1 v pack ($30) on my corsair using the BP-21 power system. Only difference is the pack but performance is VERY different.

Testing on the bench shows @WOT after 10 seconds with a TP 1320mAh 11.1v lipo on a GWS 8040HD prop
13.24 amps
128 watts

On a GWS 11.1v lipo with the same setup it's much less (crappy gen 1 lipos)
11.43 amps
104 watts

The cheap GWS pack just can't supply the same amount of power.

A Watt Meter is a very important tool to have in your toolbox. I always prop my planes for a few amps below the maximum continuous amps the pack I'm using in it is rated for just to be safe. The blade does not even come close to the limit of the TP900 pack as far as amp draw goes even at hard pull outs.

Someone asked about run times on the TP 900. I'm getting 15 minutes on mine. I don't use the stock TX though and I have my throttle curves set to 100 all the way across the board.

Here's some indoor fun I had a few weeks ago...

http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...65474641347306

hELLO,

Just wanted to show my blade with a JR body. I relocated and inverted the motor. It's really a different experience with scale body!

cool.

How much more does it weigh?

Any balance issues with the motor in the back?

For those flying the direct drive tail motor does the tractor or pusher mode work better? How do you keep the propeller on securely? Thanks.

Great point that I neglected to mention in my earlier post. The better/newer batts will hold a higher voltage at the higher end of the amp draw limit. amps are only half of the power equation (P=V*I) Power = Volts*amps. I am sure it is similar with lipos, but I know with my nimh 1.2 that the cheap ones can drop to ~1.10 V at 15 amps and the good ones hold ~1.20 V at 15 amps. You can calculate watts if you can measure amps and volts when the circuit is under load.

No balance issue so far. It used to wobble a lot before modification and I moved the bettery here and there. But with the rear motor mount, I have never experience wobbling at all probably due to a lower CG. I'm still test-flying it around and everyhting seems a-ok!

Was there a change in total weight?



http://www.collectivepitch.com/

Newbie question, the answer is probably in here somewhere but I do not know. Today I just got done fixing my first wreck, bent shaft busted rotor baldes and tail rotor blades (4th batt charge with 0 previous experience except for gliders years ago and doing something stupid) when this happened. My question is has anyone experienced the rotor blades turning with the radio turned off? I was re-adjusting the tail motor gain, I had the radio (stock) turned off and was going to unplug the battery to do another adjustment when the blades spun up rather quickly and it commenced to self-destructing and tearing up my bench. There was enough juice to hover it with a little more throttle than usual, but not much, when the event occured. My setup is stock straight out of the box. Thanks.
Bill

I can't believe the discussion of batteries has gone on this long. Anyway, two more cents worth. The lower the C rating, the longer it takes for the battery to recover from a surge. Since you're closer to the maximum potential of the pack all the time, if you have to surge it to even closer to max it takes longer for the pack to cool off and restore the potential for another surge. If too many surges are to close together you get closer to the danger area. A hot pack draws more amps, just like a motor does. And if your pulling stunts on a low C rated pack, your motor is pulling more amps too. I make it a point to take it easy on my cheaper packs (not that I do a lot of crazy stuff anyway). Although I've never actually seen a pack burn, I came real close when my blade was new. I didn't know anything about the rating deal and put on a 2s pack that I picked up for about 15 bucks. I only flew for three or four minutes and the blade would barely come off the ground. The pack had swelled up to twice its size and was blistering hot. I put the heli down and let it sit for about ten minutes, afraid the full time at any moment it would burst into flames. It didn't. After doing some research I found out the 650 mah pack had a 2C rate. It wasn't marked anywhere on the pack. I was lucky. Now I know what the rate is in advance before I buy it. Yes 1LO64, I checked out the e-powers first, just got cofused earlier. Moral to the story, don't take chances on packs unless you can afford to pay the price. Or the medical bills if it comes to that. I'll step off the soap box now. Somebody elses turn.

And yes I love the DD tail. Mine's tractor and it's my second favorite upgrade after the alum swash. May move to third if I ever get around to installing the BH

You werre apparently writing the same time I was, but I gotta jump on this one. Don't ever-ever-ever turn off your radio unless there's no power on your chopper. Radio on....Chopper on.....chopper off....radio off. The 4-in-1 has nothing to control it if the radio is turned off.

Heh, I guess I'm odd then in what I like on my heli.

I still use wood sym blades (the CF blades were to heavy for me), Run the stock AEK upgrade kit, Use the stock tail motor with a white GWS tail fin, And fly with the lightest pack I can find (TP 900mAh). I enjoy acrobatic flights with my Blade I just don't see the value of either the DD tail mod or the CNC swash they sell. All I've seen from the swash is it add more binding to the head. I'll keep mine just the way it is. I'd rather put the $35 for the swash and the $20 for the DD tail upgrade into another battery and double my run times. IMHO the BEST upgrade you can do is get a computer radio. Once you get the throttle and pitch curves worked out its so much better flying. I now fly in idle up only with my throttle curve set to 100% for all five points with a standard pitch curve and the heli is a joy to fly. I've flipped and rolled it before I got the bell hiller head. Unfortunatly I've not been able to see the difference in those types of acrobatics yet cause of the weather but I anticipate it will be a completely different machine with the new head and that much more amazing. I've done all the upgrades. I mainly keep going back to stock...

xelltronics,

Looking good, where you get that from and where is you mount the battery

Scary. Ok I got it, If my setup draws more amps that the battery is rated for-then bad news. However since my Blade only draws 9 or 10 amps max, I shouldn't see a difference in performance between my cheap lipo rated at 7C and TP rated at 12C because I'm under the limit anyway. Incidently, my lipos never get hot, just mildly warm, so I know im not stressing them.

Also regarding vertical performance with symmetrical blades. If my throttle trim is all the way down, the blade barely climbs. With trim all the way up, I'm getting decent climb power-but I notice the motor is bogging a bit under the load. Is that the typical way of measuring performance? I rarely touch my throttle trim-always have had it all the way down. Should I be adjusting it more?